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Just a wee bit:
Source: upi.com
U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and
low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past
Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a
bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their
instrument for more than 40 years, according to former
U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a
dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and
former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together
the following account. The CIA declined to comment on
the report.
While many have thought that Saddam first became
involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start
of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts
with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part
of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with
assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-
Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy
in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be
identified, described as "a horrible orgy of
bloodshed."
According to current and former U.S. officials, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded
as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War
with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s,
Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact
which was to defend the region and whose members
included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and
conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to
withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked
everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State
Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to
buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic
communists into ministry positions of "real power,"
according to this official. The domestic instability of
the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say
publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the
world."
In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA
operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties"
with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close
connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian
leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement,
Roger Morris, a former National Security Council
staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that
the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist
Baath Party "as its instrument."
According to another former senior State Department
official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a
part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to
this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in
Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's
office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe
Qasim's movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy
Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge
of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi
dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S.
officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel
Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the
Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his
own personal account. Three former senior U.S.
officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was
completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA
official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his
nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver
and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm.
Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets
that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand
grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.
"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S.
intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the
floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf
had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped
to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence
agents, several U.S. government officials said.
Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by
Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to
Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam
was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and
put him through a brief training course, former CIA
officials said. The agency then helped him get to
Cairo, they said.
One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at
the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as
having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."
In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the
upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time
playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by
CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to
Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
One former senior U.S. government official said: "In
Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine
Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class.
Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was
your basic dive."
But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits
to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as
Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger
were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S.
intelligence officials said.
Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his
Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a
gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since
they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to
Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S.
diplomat in Egypt at the time.
In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party
coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind
the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F.
Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly
denied this.
"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around
asking what the hell had happened," this official said.
But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that
the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the
CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National
Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were
then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down,
according to former U.S. intelligence officials with
intimate knowledge of the executions.
Many suspected communists were killed outright, these
sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings,
presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat,
literally, the Palace of the End.
A former senior U.S. State Department official told
UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask
that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding.
This was serious business."
A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like
the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after
Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of
his communists suddenly got killed."
British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King
of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior
Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of
Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great
victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence
operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an
old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the
communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."
Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-
Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath
Party.
The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with
Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war
in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly
sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield
intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance
aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed
forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a
U.S. interagency intelligence group. |
